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Chewing the Scenery
By Davina Elliott
Puck Books £7.99
506 pages
Dateline: 20th February, 2009
Buy this book! There are four good reasons why you should.
- It is a great read.
- It gives outsiders a good idea of what life is like behind the scenes
as a West End production moves from rehearsals to an opening night.
- Davina Elliott is a first-time author and deserves support and encouragement.
- This is the first project for a new publisher which is starting
up at what Charles Dickens would undoubtedly have called "the
worst of times".
So what is so good? Miss Elliott takes us on a rollercoaster ride with
the cast and creative team behind a (fictional) new production of Blithe
Spirit at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket.
They may be carefully selected stereotypes and characters are exaggerated
for effect but the overall result will make any reader laugh and cry
(on the tube if you don't take care). Chewing the Scenery also
offers insights into the stresses and pressures that go into a creating
a production of this type.
The personalities are recognisable both to those with some knowledge
of show business but also to anyone who has walked been into a pub or
sat in an office.
Judith (Madame Arcati) is a Grande Dame for whom those capital
letters are de rigueur. She is a fearsome veteran who takes over
the reins when the grossly incompetent, gay director Alexander and his
designer boyfriend Jasper prove wanting. Their ideas of a radical production
would have made Noël (she knew him) turn in his grave but just
leave readers laughing.
As egos collide, Judith is supported by, inter alia, an actor
with stage fright, a beauty who can't act, a gossip, a duelling randy
husband and long-suffering wife, an enthusiastic tyro and lovely Holly,
who steps into glory from the standard thespian's world of rejection.
It might all sound clichéd and probably is but Davina Elliott's
knowledge of human foibles and stage business in every sense of those
words is so strong that she turns Blithe Spirit into a blithe
and at times sublime experience.
Philip Fisher
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